What is death like?

[punshhh]

No reason.
It just did.

Yes and regarding the how, again we draw a blank.

This can (I expect) be expressed in complex mathematics relating to quantum fluctuations.

It would be interesting to discover how closely the models fit the reality.

But "No reason." seems to cover it.

Its a usefull position to adopt, but again it may be incorrect, who knows?

Your question, "Why..." seems to be seeking a reason. There need not be a reason.

My why along with my anthropomorphic comments are to stimulate thought, I realise their limitations.

It's possible there need not even have been a cause.

Anythings possible in the great unknown.

"How..." questions are usually more profitable, to be honest.

Only when it comes to practical pursuits, not with respect to existence itself.

 

[Roboramma]

Why? Just because something is infinite doesn't mean that it will contain every possibility. For example, you could easily have an infinite non-repeating series of decimal digits that never contains the digit 7.

The word possible doesn't really mean anything with respect to the digits of a number unless we talk about some sort of process for generating that number.

It seems then that you're suggestion:

Unless you mean if it can be produced by random chance, it may occur infinite times?

To talk about for instance a process with randomness is necessary for the concept of "possible" to apply.

But your existing mind/memories at your point of death can't just randomly be reproduced in a new healthy body.

Why not? It might not be likely, but if you had a vat containing all the same chemical elements in the right proportions that make up punshhh, it's possible for them to just happen to come together to form him.

Unlikely is putting it lightly, of course, but that doesn't make it impossible.

And given that those elements are themselves made of other particles, all you really need is those particles, in the right proportions.

 

[Roboramma]

But if immortality is not a possibility (eg, aging can't be halted or circumvented), then all of your presumably infinite duplicates would die off at some point of their lives, so even if we take this highly questionably hypothesis as accurate, then at best the result would be to effectively extend "your" lifespan by a few decades.

Aging is a material process. While it's incredibly unlikely for that process to happen in reverse, it's possible. The laws of physics work in both directions of time. Thermodynamics is just probabilities.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

"How..." questions are usually more profitable, to be honest.

Only when it comes to practical pursuits, not with respect to existence itself.

I disagree. When it comes to existence itself, "how" questions are just as useless as "why" questions for some things but more more useful for the others.

 

[dafydd]

I've never been dead but I imagine it would be like spending a week at a convention of mystics.

 

[Croc411]

So, to make it plain, let us suppose he is right at some time t. Will he still be right at time t+1? or 2? Remember, it isn't a set combination of matter either; radioactivity for decay and matter formation are ongoing as well.

Of course they are not the same anymore at t+1, the two universes will almost certainly diverge after one Planck time. But at t+1 some other distant hubble volume will match ours.

The root of my argument would rely on being able to frame the universe in some non-discreet fashion, like the continuity on a number line, not just creating a very large number. I'm not sure I've justified that yet.

OK, but how would a non-discreet universe change anything? You wouldn't need an infinitely accurate match, would you? If two universes match down to the Bekenstein bound, they are identical for every conceivable purpose, no?

 

[Lowpro]

I've never been dead but I imagine it would be like spending a week at a convention of mystics.

Sounds more like Hell...

 

[HghrSymmetry]

Remember the billions of years of nonexistence before you were born? No? It will be just like that.

Winner.

End of thread.

 

[marplots]

Of course they are not the same anymore at t+1, the two universes will almost certainly diverge after one Planck time. But at t+1 some other distant hubble volume will match ours.

Only if we put in a stricture about how universes can evolve in time. You'd need to explore the available space of universes in some fashion that wouldn't, for instance, have 3/4 of your sample identical and lots of mismatches. This assumption could be built in, I suppose.

OK, but how would a non-discreet universe change anything? You wouldn't need an infinitely accurate match, would you? If two universes match down to the Bekenstein bound, they are identical for every conceivable purpose, no?

It changes things because it introduces another set of infinities. For example, suppose we have access to infinite temperatures (which I can't justify but want to use to make the point) -- that set of infinities can play against the numbers used to justify a duplicate. Any physical process mapped on a continuous graphing will give you an infinity of values to choose from. But this can be dealt with by assuming discrete at some length, time or whatever. If it's granular for all measurements, my argument fails.

To talk about this, we don't need whole universes. If you can prove that some volume, even a very tiny one, of our current universe has to have a duplicate, that would make the case. I, of course, would have to show that this unit volume couldn't necessarily have a duplicate and base my argument on some infinitely divisible process. I am still not sure I can do that without help from someone more knowledgeable in physics.

 

[Croc411]

I am still not sure I can do that without help from someone more knowledgeable in physics.

Well, good luck with that, I certainly cannot help you there.

Infinite entropy in a finite volume? I guess you will have a hard time making that compatible with the laws of thermodynamics ...

 

[Tricky]

It's like forgetting the words to a song you never knew.

 

[dlorde]

Tegmark once calculated that, given a big enough and homogeneous universe (galaxies wherever you go, same laws of nature everywhere), the next exact copy of our own hubble volume should be no more than 10 ^ (10 ^ 115) metres (roughly a googolplex light years) away. No infinities required, just very large numbers.

Assuming his numbers are correct (I didn't check), would you agree with him or not? If not, why not?

I don't agree with him, because if I understood the way he explained it on a recent documentary, he was calculating the distance you'd need to go to find a copy of our Hubble volume if you assume that it can arise from random arrangements of that number of particles - but that's not how structure in the universe arises.

Of course, it may be that I don't understand his methodology

 

[Brian-M]

Yes I realise this, but I was me as a baby and being born as me will result in me. Albeit with a different course of experience.

When I say "me" in this context I am referring to whatever it is that results in me being consciously present in this world, or any other world. Alternatively if I am not present in a world then I am non existent.

But biology alone isn't what makes you you. You are your mind, which is formed from both the physical structure of the brain determined by biology, and the effect of experiences and environment throughout your life.

If that baby has a "different course of experience" then that baby will have a different mind. It will be a physical clone of you, but be a completely different person. Like an identical twin.

Who you are changes gradually over time. You are no longer entirely the same person you were twenty years ago, and in twenty years you will no longer be entirely the same person you are now. The only thing that provides us with a sense of persistence of self is the continuity of experience.

Unless it experiences and undergoes everything the same as you did, it will not have your mind, nor your memories, nor any continuity of experience with you. In no sense would this duplicate be you.

 

[Brian-M]

Why not? It might not be likely, but if you had a vat containing all the same chemical elements in the right proportions that make up punshhh, it's possible for them to just happen to come together to form him.

Hypothetically, if exactly the right conditions where this would be physically possible were maintained, then yes. But these conditions don't occur in nature. Someone would have to create and maintain this setup for... however many googolplex of aeons it takes for this to occur.

And given that those elements are themselves made of other particles, all you really need is those particles, in the right proportions.

But their merging to form the correct elements would release enough energy to blast everything apart, making it impossible to form a human body. What you'd need is the right elements, in the right proportions, in the right temperature, in the right pressure, in the right quantities, with the right level of agitation, ect, in order for it to be physically possible for it to even be theoretically possible for this to happen.

As these conditions don't occur in nature, it can't just randomly happen.

Aging is a material process. While it's incredibly unlikely for that process to happen in reverse, it's possible. The laws of physics work in both directions of time. Thermodynamics is just probabilities.

If thermodynamics were working backwards, then time would be effectively going backwards, so it wouldn't really count as extending his life.

When cells duplicate themselves, the telomeres at the ends of the chromosomes become shorter. When the telomeres are too short, the cell cannot reproduce. This puts an upper limit on the human life span. No matter how healthy you are beforehand, at this point your cells stop reproducing and your organs start failing, and you die.

 

[Roboramma]

But their merging to form the correct elements would release enough energy to blast everything apart,

But that doesn't mean that it would "blast everything apart. Only if that energy were released approximately equally in all directions. Instead, the process could:
a) take place over longer time scales, allowing the energy to dissipate less violently.
b) just happen to have the energy released in such a manner as it didn't happen to interact with the other particles involved. While this is again incredibly unlikely, it's just one of the massive number of possible ways for the energy to be released.

making it impossible to form a human body. What you'd need is the right elements, in the right proportions, in the right temperature, in the right pressure, in the right quantities, with the right level of agitation, ect, in order for it to be physically possible for it to even be theoretically possible for this to happen.

I dispute that you need all those things. All those things simply make the incredibly unlikely event less unlikely, but aren't necessary.

If thermodynamics were working backwards, then time would be effectively going backwards, so it wouldn't really count as extending his life.

Except you only need thermodynamics to just happen to be "working backward" some of the time for some particular processes. Everything else can go ahead as normal.

The classic example is a cup falling off a table and breaking. We don't see the reverse: a broken cup forming and flying back to land on a table. But it is physically possible. Just so unlikely that on time scales like the age of the universe and with a sample size on the scale of the hubble volume, it's very very unlikely to happen.

But if it did happen that wouldn't mean that everything else would go in reverse: it would just mean that a very unlikely event occured. The rest of the universe would still be overwhelmingly likely to continue as it does. Similarly if such unlikely events occurred in your body there's no reason to expect everything else to follow a similar pattern: that would be even less likely.

 

[marplots]

Well, good luck with that, I certainly cannot help you there.

Infinite entropy in a finite volume? I guess you will have a hard time making that compatible with the laws of thermodynamics ...

You don't need infinite entropy, just an infinite number of possible states. The entropy level could be the same between many (or most) of the states.

The condition I need to make it work would require something like an infinite number of available frequencies for light. But I don't know what that would mean as the scales get really small. What's allowable? What makes sense when we are down to Planck scales? That's where I'm stuck.

Of course, it doesn't have to be light, anything not granular will do. A black hole might do, if a singularity can be of infinite density. All you need to do is say it would require an infinite number of universes to match all the possible conditions black holes can take on, and then declare that this ruins the distance calculations to the next matching universe.

 

[Croc411]

I don't agree with him, because if I understood the way he explained it on a recent documentary, he was calculating the distance you'd need to go to find a copy of our Hubble volume if you assume that it can arise from random arrangements of that number of particles - but that's not how structure in the universe arises.

Yes, if you took a googolplex-sized sample of the universe you would, for instance, hardly find even one star that is cube- instead of ball-shaped. The vast majority of theoretically possible Hubble volumes you would not find there. So the number for a presumably typical Hubble volume like ours would be much lower than 10 ^ (10 ^ 115) m.

If this is what you mean, Tegmark is aware of it and mentions it briefly in the article linked by marplots.

 

[dlorde]

If this is what you mean, Tegmark is aware of it and mentions it briefly in the article linked by marplots.

Yes, that is what I meant. Thanks for that, I couldn't quite reconcile someone as smart as Tegmark making such a simple error

 

[gentlehorse]

What is death like? I don't know. The only place we find the experience of human-like consciousness, self-awareness, and what-not is in living brains. Sans living brain, there's not much to suggest that there will be a whole lot of experiencing going on.

I'm hoping there's a really cool realm where we live happily for eternity without the need for brains. I'd fit right in.

 

[EGarrett]

I am interested in what you think about death.

In your mind what it is like to be dead?
Can you imagine it?
Can you justify your position?
Are you looking forward to it?
Or are you scared, and hoping it won't happen for some time?
How often do you think about it seriously?

I was watching you tube footage after the Houla massacre in Syria. Which caused me to wonder about the answers to the above questions that would be given by people who live there.

It is exactly like it was before you were born.

I can imagine it in the same way I imagine the years before I was born, except that I can read about what happened then, and they had no idea who I was. Whereas, after I'm dead, it will be the opposite. I have no idea who they'll be, but they can (presumably in some capacity) read about me.

I'm not "looking forward" to it, as in happily waiting for the day. So far I've enjoyed being alive. I do think about it all the time though, as realizing that there's no fantasy-land after death is one of the absolute most striking things about being an atheist, but how I feel about it depends entirely on my mood.

Sometimes it freaks me out, other times it's seems much less stressful than dealing with the BS of living, and other times, I view the billions of years after I'm gone in the same block as I view the billions of years before I was here. Both are non-concerns. Ultimately, I also figure that it's not something to think too much about until I'm much older, and I am very interested in life-extension and what that may hold in the future.